This is just to say that I will not participate in this climate of fear. I refuse to have my sense of humanity replaced by a reactionary tide of media and government innuendo and mythologising. But it's getting hard.
Despite choosing not to read newspapers, or watch tv news and only being very careful about which BBC news coverage I will listen to, I realised you can accidently overhear or see things that are pure incitements to fear and/or hatred. I have always known I live a different life from that which appears in the media. It seems clear to me that here in Britain, the people who run all forms of media come from a similar background to each other and frankly, don't really understand - much less reflect - any other kind of culture that coexists here in Britain - across cultural, ethnic, geographic and class lines.
I just overheard on the radio - I think it was the Asian-network BBC service that some website has been closed down. It's called redalert - or something - and it listed people who work in anti-racism and their addresses, so that those who wish to silence them can beat them up or send them hate mail - I guess.... It's one thing to be an active racist, but we live in scary times when there is a perceived need to silence people who think differently...